(飯豊山) Mt. Iide Hike

SEMI-FREE MOUNTAIN HUTS EVERYWHERE! I wanted a paid one, but NADA! Oh, and no reservations needed either, so go nuts! Oh, and I'm saying semi-free, because they don't cost an arm and a leg, but they still cost money - JPY2,000-3000 a night to be specific. Either way, let's get down to planning and hiking.

Budget: JPY25,500 (~USD238) from Tokyo

JPY24,000+. Roundtrip train, Tokyo Station to Oguni Station.
JPY1,500. Roundtrip bus from Oguni Station.

Hike Date / Difficulty (Elevation: 2,105m / 6,906ft)

Hike Date : November 16-17, 2024
Difficulty: 5 out of 5. This is a long hike with some legit rock scrambles / chain sections.
Route below is around 28.4kilometers, with an elevation change of ▲2,918m/ ▽2,922m (20h)
Map Link

When to Go
The bus to Iide-sansou only runs from July 1 to August 31. If you have a car, then as long as the roads stay open.

Special Notes

Weather forecast: English / Japanese.
Water sources. There are some marked water source, but during winter (or autumn in our case), the water freezes. So do not assume there will be water at the top. We went in November, and there was no water source at the top.
Mountain huts - here's a list. I did call/email them, and there are no reservations. Case to case basis, there will be someone manning the place. So just show up, and pray there is space for you. General information on overall status, etc of the mountain huts in this mountain range is in this Japanese website, which looks someone with a benevolent heart decided to make an online bulletin board and basically write everything. It can be overwhelming, but it has the critical, up-to-date information you need. For this itinerary, I plan to stay at the following mountain huts:

Kairagi-goya (梅花皮小屋). JPY2,000 a night, can accommodate 53 people.
Motoyama-goya (本山小屋). Can accommodate 50 people, based on July 2020 info, there is no water source as everything is still frozen. Pics below.
Mikuni-goya (三国小屋) and Kiriawase-goya (切合小屋). We passed by this using Osawa-tozanguchi trailhead. Two floors, and spacious for at least 20 people. Pics below.

Trailhead.

Osawa-tozanguchi (御沢登山口). google maps pin. It's the trailhead below Rindou-shuuten in the map above. Sorry I cropped the map too soon haha. We had a car for this trip, so we took this trailhead.
Iide-sansou (飯豊山荘) is the only public transport friendly trailhead. To get there, get on a train to Oguni Station, then take a bus from Oguni Station to Iide Sanso.

Tokyo to Oguni Station. You can take the train from Tokyo to any of the following:

via Niigata Station, JPY12,170 one way. Earliest train arrival: 10:13am.
via Yonezawa Station, JPY11,900 one way. Earliest train arrival: 11:47am.
Given this, you might want to stay there the night before.

Bus, Oguni Station to Iide-sansou. Updated info should be here, just click "南部線", which is the third one as of checking.

Bus schedule. Oguni Station (小国駅) to Iide-Sansou (飯豊山荘)

Bus schedule Iide-Sansou ((飯豊山荘) to Oguni Station (小国駅)

Itinerary

Start hike. Haha. I'm too lazy to write one, and if someone is looking for it here, leave me a comment and I'll update this. ;)

Starting point is Yonezawa, so of course we are having Yonezawa beef.

Rise and shine! Arrived at the parking lot.

The toilet at the parking lot was quite good.

The trailhead!

The official start of the hike.

A marker that is barely readable.

A water source. May or may not have water when you visit. This is pretty low in the mountain, and thus had water. Once we got to the ridge and the huts, there was no more water as everything had been frozen.

Getting to the ridge.

Finally at the ridge.

This is the sign that the scramble is about to start.

This is the trail up.

One of the "safer" rock sections.

First free hut : Mikuni (三国小屋)

Some ladders up.

Plenty of flat sections in between the two huts. At least that's what I thought so. When I was coming back, I felt like there was a lot of ups and downs.